KINGSTON, N.Y. -- A few months before Richard Tobey died, his mindsuddenly started to deteriorate. The man who read The New York Timescover to cover every Sunday inexplicably had trouble putting two wordstogether.

He forgot how to use the VCR even though he had taped all his favoriteshows in the past. Sometimes he remembered things that never happenedlike performing synchronized swimming with a friend as a young boy.

Doctors thought Tobey had a bad case of sleep apnea, hooked him up to asleep machine and prescribed medicine. But when his symptoms worsened,he was checked into the hospital where a biopsy revealed he hadCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal brain-destroying disorderthat strikes one in a million people worldwide.

"I knew there was no cure for it," said Tobey's wife, Barbara. "It was adeath sentence."

Tobey died on Oct. 9 at age 59, nearly two months after he wasdiagnosed. By that time, unconfirmed reports had been circulating thatas many as five people in the mid-Hudson Valley region were suspected ofdying from the disease.

State health officials launched an investigation into the mysteriousgroup of deaths, and reported last week that they found nothing unusual.

Of the five suspected deaths, three were confirmed to be CJD-related.One case was ruled out after testing by the National Prion DiseasePathology Surveillance Center in Ohio. Another case was inconclusivebecause no autopsy was ever done.

Although two of the confirmed deaths occurred in Ulster County (thethird was in neighboring Dutchess County), health officials noted nounusual pattern since the deaths were spread out over a two-year period.The state refused to identify the CJD victims, citing patientconfidentiality laws.

New York state has an average of 20 CJD deaths a year. Health officialsare still trying to determine whether there is a common thread among thethree confirmed cases.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease became a hot-button public health issue inrecent years because it has been linked to eating beef tainted with madcow disease. None of the New York deaths has been identified as madcow-related.

Barbara Tobey, who buried her husband in a private funeral last week,remains puzzled about his death. She is perplexed how her husband, whodreamed of buying a boat to go bass fishing when he retired next year,went into such a rapid mental decline without any warning.

The results of the state probe only added to Barbara Tobey's confusionsince her husband experienced similar symptoms as Coleen Staccio, a46-year-old Kingston woman whose initial CJD diagnosis was later ruled out.

Family members said Staccio, who died on Aug. 28, was initiallydiagnosed as having CJD and her death certificate listed the disease asthe immediate cause of death. But last week, her family received areport from the Ohio testing center that cast doubt on the diagnosis.

The report said Staccio did not die from CJD. It also did not say whatmight have killed her.

"We were really devastated because she had every possible symptom," saidStaccio's father, Don Genther. "We just want to have closure."

The more common type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as classic CJD,is responsible for about one in 10,000 U.S. deaths each year, and itscause is unknown 85 percent of the time.

Only about 150 cases of the human disease linked to mad cow, known as"variant" CJD, have been counted worldwide and the vast majority ofthose were in the United Kingdom. In the United States, there is onlyone known case of variant CJD _ a Florida woman who died in June aftereating contaminated beef more than a decade ago in England.

Both forms of CJD are believed to involve the unexplained mutation ofproteins in the brain called prions.

Tobey's downward spiral began in late August when he became lethargicand had trouble swallowing. But Barbara Tobey was not alarmed, thinkingit had something to do with the medication doctors gave him for hissleep apnea. But she "totally lost it" when she came home from work onher lunch break one day and found that her husband had put peanuts inthe freezer because he wanted them cold. She knew then something wasterribly wrong.

Tobey was admitted to Benedictine Hospital in Kingston and wastransferred to Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City where a brainbiopsy showed he tested positive for CJD, according to his family.

Barbara Tobey stayed by her husband's bedside the entire time and kept ajournal, scribbling every detail about her interactions with doctors soher husband could read about it when he recovered.